PS4 Vs. PC: Where The Wild Things Are

Stirring hornets' nests is not something I necessarily enjoy, but occasionally I find myself---stick in hand---the buzz and bustle of an angry swarm rising up all around me.

I'd like to blame it on some mischievous alter-ego, some prankster self working against my better judgment and self interest...but then I imagine that's not entirely true. Whatever the case, I wrote a bit of a hornet-nest-stirring-post yesterday that ended up, thankfully, as something of a learning experience.

In that post, I tried to argue that the PS4 architecture was different enough from anything we've seen or are likely to see any time soon on the gaming PC market, and that comparisons between the two are essentially apples to oranges. Of course, given that we don't have a working PS4 to test, these comparisons (and subsequent musings) are even more hypothetical.

I made a few mistakes in yesterday's piece, foremost among them the headline which, understandably, ruffled some feathers. I also overstated the benefits of the PS4's APU and GDDR5 memory. I think a lot of it remains to be seen, but I definitely painted too rosy a picture.

As I said in my post yesterday, I wasn't trying to say that the PS4 will be "better" than PC, but I think I did give off that impression. In fact, I don't believe that calling something "next-gen" is the same as calling it "more powerful."

I'd say the Wii U is next-gen, also, for similar reasons but also because of its use of asymmetrical gameplay with the Wii U gamepad. It isn't a graphical power-house, but it's very much "next-gen."

PCs don't have "generations" in quite the same way, which is why I wrote yesterday that "it’s hard to top PC gaming with its adaptability, openness, and future-proofing." They constantly evolve, and that's one of their huge advantages and, ironically, one of their disadvantages as well (from a development perspective, at least.)

In any case, to clarify things from yesterday:

The PS4 will not outpace gaming PCs; rather it's being built with necessary sacrifices in mind to keep costs down and efficiency up. The fact is, the PS4 doesn't need to be a top-line gaming PC and nor can it afford to be. It will have reasonably powerful components, reasonably low overhead in the OS, and provide developers with the ease-of-use they didn't have with the PS3.

Because there will be just one PS4, developers will be able to program directly for it rather than for a wide variety of PCs and their disparate hardware, and over the years this will allow developers to truly harness its full capacity---something we've seen with both the Xbox 360 and PS3 this generation. The GDDR5 in the PS4 may have higher latency, but I suspect developers will find ways to take advantage of its idiosyncrasies. This will not make PS4 better than PC; indeed, PC specs will quickly improve while consoles remain stagnant. But hardware isn't everything.

In the mean time, comparing PCs and the PS4 is an exercise in futility, not only because nobody owns a PS4 yet but because their architecture is not the same and the way developers will program for each will be different. Sure, you could probably come close to the same specs with a gaming rig, but even then you won't have the same OS, the same controller, or the same games. That doesn't make one better than the other, but we won't be able to even cost-compare the two until Sony announces a price.

Finally, the real determining factor for any system's quality is its catalog of games. If the PS4 has games you enjoy, it will be a great system. The PS3 didn't have a ton of great content in the beginning, but that has changed. Even just looking at the exclusives for 2013 you can see how much Sony is pushing unique content. It's that unique content that will make or break next-gen systems, not their graphics.

The same rule applies to PC, and often works in PC's favor. After all, we're on the cusp of what is quite likely a PC gaming renaissance. Kickstarter, digital distribution, lower development costs---the barrier to entry for PC is lower than for consoles, and has led to the proliferation of many incredible games, many of which---like FTL and Hotline Miami---are hardly graphics-intensive beasts.

I probably did speak too authoritatively in my post yesterday while overstating the benefits of things like GDDR5 and the APU, and I think I did a poor job at conveying the ideas I was trying to convey; the headline alone made it sound like I was propping up the PS4 at the expense of gaming PCs, which was not my intent.

The point is, no platform is necessarily "superior" than another; indeed, when I write comparison-style pieces between platforms I'm usually writing for parody's sake (see, for instance, my "Why you should buy a PS3/Xbox 360" articles.) I think the spectacle these articles garner is instructive.

At the end of the day, when it comes to video games and the systems they run on, I say the more the merrier (within reason.) There are downsides to exclusive content, and to the expense developers and publishers face making games across platforms, but I still believe that the competition drives better games, more innovation, and is an overall net benefit for gamers.

In the end, it's all about the games.

P.S. I received a lot of great responses yesterday via email and the comments. Aside from some good ol' fashioned ad hominem the informed arguments were really educational. I might post some of these in a follow-up post to broaden the perspective further.

P.P.S. I want to clarify also that I'm not fully in agreement with all of my critics. We don't know how the PS4 is being engineered precisely, or how it will take advantage of the GPU and the GDDR5 memory. This is where the architecture is truly unique, and where we could see really interesting things with the higher bandwidth (higher latency be damned.) I'll try to dig deeper and do a longer piece on this very question. But I would not discount the PS4's use of GDDR5 or an APU so quickly.